I Drink Therefore I Am, Roger Scruton, 2009, p.182: As the thinker who came nearest, prior to Monty Python, to stumbling on the title of this book, Descartes deserves a little recognition. This does not alter the fact that, through no fault of his own, for he was a secret kind of person, he has ended up as the most overrated philosopher in history, famous for arguments that begin from nothing and go nowhere, and deserving credit, if at all, for having made the thought experiment central to philosophical method. I would suggest a deep dark Rhone wine, maybe a Chateauneuf-du-Pape from old vines, with the smooth velvet finish and liquorice and thyme aromas of the Provencal hillsides. Such a wine will compensate for the thinness of the Meditations and give you rather more to talk about.
p.99: Modern philosophy began with Descartes, and with his study in depth of the I, a study which, precisely because of its depth, was entirely futile. I does not denote, as Descartes thought, a substance hidden from public perception; there is nothing to be discovered by looking inwards, and the relentless concentration on the first-person case, which Descartes initiated but which came to its apogee in our time with the phenomenological method of Edmund Husserl, has generated one of the greatest heaps of jargon-infested rubbish in the history of ideas.

What is consciousness? Paul Broks, New Scientist 50th Anniversary Special 1956-2006, p.60: One patient had a strong sense of identity and autobiography but believed that she had ceased to exist. "Am I dead?" she asked. This condition, Cotard's syndrome, was due to a neurological decoupling of feelings and thoughts. Thinking that one exists was not enough: the notion had also to be felt - "I feel I think, therefore I am."

The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten And ninety-nine other thought experiments, Julian Baggini, 2012/2005, p. 185: The key point is that the certainty you get from 'I think, therefore I am' comes only in the moment of its thinking...The fact that we think may show that we exist, but it does not tell us anything about what kind of thing we are, or whether we continue to exist as the same person over time.

The Philosophers Toolkit, Julian Baggini, Peter S. Fosl, 2008/2003, p.207: I think, therefore I am, from Discourse on Method, pt 4 (1637); I am; I exist, from Meditations on First Philosophy, Meditation 2 (1641). The difference between the two is important. Descartes is not deducing his existence from the fact that he thinks. Rather, Descartes maintains that I think; I am is what he calls a clear and distinct idea, an idea that when clearly and distinctly conceived by the mind is immediately seen to be indubitable and true. (Descartes theory echoes the ancient Stoic doctrine of cataleptic impressions. Spinoza would later call a similar manner of conceiving, adequate.) The therefore in I think, therefore I am is thus redundant.

Philosophical Reasoning, John Passmore, 1961, Chapter 4, Self-Refutation, p.60: Descartes alleges that I am not a thinking being is self-contradictory. Yet on the face of it no manipulation can convert I am not a thinking being into the form p and not-p.

Language, Truth and Logic, Alfred Jules Ayer, 1967/1936, p.46: I think Descartes realized well enough that a mere appeal to intuition was insufficient for his purpose, since men are not equally credulous, and that what he was really trying to do was to base all our knowledge on propositions which it would be self-contradictory to deny. He thought he had found such a proposition in cogito, which must not here be understood in its ordinary sense of I think, but rather as meaning there is a thought now. In fact he was wrong, because non cogito would be self-contradictory only if it negated itself: and this no significant proposition can do. But even if it were true that such a proposition as there is a thought now was logically certain, it still would not serve Descartes purpose. For if cogito is taken in this sense, his initial principle, cogito ergo sum is false.
I exist does not follow from there is a thought now.


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